Former Marshfield Police Chief reflects on changes during his tenure

Thursday

Feb 27, 2014 at 4:00 AMFeb 27, 2014 at 1:37 PM

William Sullivan, who headed the Marshfield police force for 27 years before retiring in the summer of 2012, now works at a Marshfield insurance agency. He recently looked back on his four-plus decades in law enforcement, talking about how policing evolved and how it stayed basically the same.

Staff Reporter

MARSHFIELD – Former Marshfield Police Chief William Sullivan spent the majority of his life in uniform, weathering changes in policy and technology as he worked to better the department, both for his officers and the community.“I worked until the last day I could by law,” he said on a recent Tuesday in his office at Cook & Co. Insurance, where he now heads the Injured on Duty division.

That day was in August of 2012, after 27 years as chief and more than 40 years with the department. During his tenure as chief, he needed to see the force through a time of transition – from a “quasi-military” method of police work to a “community policing” model, Sullivan said.

He considers the period from 1969 to 1978 “probably the most difficult time to be a police officer.” He describes it as “a very violent time.”

There were many political protests and other social demonstrations on college campuses and in other heavily populated areas back then, so police training focused on riot control and reactionary measures, Sullivan said.

But as the baby boomers aged, “society demanded that police be more responsive” to everyday issues in neighborhoods, he said.

“It could be seen from the demographic of the population that there would be less violent behavior,” Sullivan said. “I think that most people who had spent a long period of time in law enforcement recognized that it was the job of police to be a 24-hour response network.”

Sullivan identified the founding of the Police Executive Research Forum in 1976 as the beginning of the shift toward community policing, but he said it took many years for community policing to become truly integrated into the academy.

“It was adopted as a cliché, but no one was actually training officers in its use,” Sullivan said.

Under Sullivan’s guidance, Massachusetts became the first state to change the style of training provided at police academies. In 2000, he was named chairman of the Massachusetts Criminal Justice Training Council.

Even though the evolutionary process took place, the job remained pretty much the same over the years, Sullivan said.

“No matter what changes, it’s still policing. The kinds of things that happened in the 1980s still happen today,” he said.

He recalled a time when officers would have to unlock a call box with a phone inside to check back in with the station.

“A radio for every guy was unheard of, and then when we did get radios, we shared a frequency with all of southeastern Massachusetts,” Sullivan said.

Sullivan is happy in his job with Cook & Co. He is in charge of a department that he suggested Peter Cook create in 1986. The transition has been pleasant, he said, and he enjoys having more time to spend with his wife, children and grandchildren.

“Police work is wonderful,” he said. “I’d recommend it to anyone who feels they have the skill set for it. It’s a great way to get to know humanity.”

Lauren DiTullio may be reached at lditullio@ledger.com.

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